We cannot increase financial return unless we understand and work within budget constraints, understand market forces, and use our technical expertise in the creation of simple, cost-effective solutions that are easy to build.

Central to our proposition of increasing investment value is an understanding that buildings do not attain value as objects in isolation. Their material and utilitarian value is expanded by their role as an affirmation of human aspiration and as a stage for human interaction; buildings are embedded in the specific contexts of a region, a city, a culture; and they need to exist respectfully within the living ecosystems of the planet that sustains us.

We do what we do for the people we serve. We are mindful of the dreams and desires of our clients, of the lives lived within and around our buildings, and, in designing, ask ourselves:

Have we understood the possibilities inherent in the brief?

Have we used our understanding of surface, form, colour, light and acoustics to create spaces and places that resonate with their users?

How will the client, the user, the visitor, the passer-by feel within or around our building?

Are we contributing to their health and wellbeing?

Have we created the best setting possible for the users to work, live learn or play in?

Will they see the building as adding value to their lives?

Architecture is a cultural act. Good designs emanate from within their cultural context, and serve to expand cultural identity. We understand that cultural creation is both a solitary and a communal undertaking, and we love working collaboratively in creative teams, probing to understand the underpinnings of a given culture and asking ourselves:

Have we used the appropriate materials, technologies and crafts?

How do we enrich the cultural context.

Can we contribute to cultural expression with innovative approaches and with integrity, rooted in understanding and respect?

Will the cultural value we aspire to earn our design enduring appreciation?

Will users find meaning in our work and will they, therefore, identify with it?

Can we contribute to cultural expression with

People live in, and shape, communities; buildings exist in, and shape, neighbourhoods. We use our understanding and experience in the field of urban design and our determination to make better urban environments to ensure that our buildings are good neighbours. We ask ourselves:

Do we understand and are we respectful to the environment in which we are building?

Have we considered the wider community affected by our intervention?

Do we have their investment in the neighbourhood, their social interaction and their wellbeing at heart?

Will our building add value to the community, improve the neighbourhood, and in turn gain value for our client through its response to its context?

Building make up the cities we need to sustain human life. Yet buildings today contribute excessively to global warming, resource scarcity and critical threats to our plant’s natural, self-regulating, life sustaining system. In our pursuit to counter any adverse impact of construction on the environment, we consistently ask ourselves: Are we driven enough to learn what we can, to innovate, and to push beyond the status quo in reducing our buildings’ demands on energy, water and non-renewable resources? Will future generations judge that in making our building, we have used resources wisely? Are we anchoring the financial sustainability of the investment made in the building in true environmental sustainability?

Ultimately we seek to make greener, more culturally appropriate buildings that enhance neighbourhoods, make money for our clients and, above all, are great places to be.